Total Noob question: Is crunchyroll free? I tried to watch a show called KonoSuba this morning but at one point I got stuck with endless adverts (I watched through 20 ads before giving up) Do you have to make an account and is it free? Do you have to pay premium? Also, is the show good? It seemed interesting from what I saw

Just made my first physical anime purchase, as I bought both collections of Captain Earth. I had some Amazon credit, so they didn't cost me full price, I've been wanting to check it out for some time and since it's been out for a couple years I don't think Netflix or Toonami are going to get it at this point (I figured they wouldn't since it's subs only).

@Let'sGoSwitch, it's been a few years since I last tried Crunchyroll, but I believe it has free & paid account tiers.

Free accounts can watch most things, but with ads (and I believe sub-HD resolution), while paid accounts don't have ads & are in HD (I believe they get new episodes a week earlier as well). Take this with a grain of salt however, as again it's been awhile since I tried them.

Total Noob question: Is crunchyroll free? I tried to watch a show called KonoSuba this morning but at one point I got stuck with endless adverts (I watched through 20 ads before giving up) Do you have to make an account and is it free?

Endless ads should not be a thing, that has to be a glitch or something (and I think has happened to me once or twice in the past).

@LetsGoSwitch Yes, Premium is no ads + access to apps on various platforms. You don't even need a free account unless you want to keep track of what you've watched, though. 20 ads was indeed a glitch. You normally only have to sit through 3-5...

Revisions (Netflix) - Mecha anime that sees modern day Shibuya teleported centuries into a post-apocolyptic future where humanity is nearly extinct and they come under attack from monsters known as the revisions. Their only chance of survival rests with the "String Puppets", mecha designed by what remains of humanity in the future, but strangely enough are only able to be piloted by a small group of modern Shibuya's high schoolers.

Violence - Mid: There's not many gory scenes, but a couple of the few it does have are brutal, such as a person's body literally popping when being crushed by a revision, and a character being shot in the head. There's a couple other bloody scenes but nothing like those mentioned above, and a lot of mechanical violence.

Sex - Mild: There is one bathing scene with a few of the female characters (they briefly discuss jealously over one character's bust size during this segment), however nothing more explicit than cleavage is ever shown.

Language - Mild: Typical PG-13 type stuff.

How'd I like it? - I thought it was a pretty decent watch, mostly for fans of mecha or sci-fi anime. It had a pretty interesting story, some decent action, and I really liked how this one looked, even though it was mostly CGI animation. My biggest issue is the 12 episode running time, as it feels like just as soon as they're done setting everything up they start setting it up for the climax (it actually handles this better than a lot of similarly lengthed series with a pretty satisfying ending, though they then unnecessarily set up for a sequel it may never get). Also, even I found the main character to be a bit grating and that's not something that usually bothers me.

@RR529 12-13 episode lengh anime has become such an ingrained standard in Japan. I've watched copious amounts of anime over the years and I am really sick of the system. So many series are forced to either bum rush to completion or leave off on a cliff hangar and no way of knowing if there will be another season. It used to be based on how well the DVDs and merchandise sell in Japan, but some studios in Japan thankfully are finally waking up to the importance of the international market, in part due to the success of anime on Crunchyroll and Netflix.

@kkslider5552000 What's going on with that? I haven't used Netflix for a few months because I heard Disney was pulling everything from them and the Marvel content was like, 75% of what I watched on Netflix.

Well that's part of it, but they've also been pulling a lot of series with niche but passionate fanbases. And I don't even use Netflix or watch nearly any live action series, so the fact that I even noticed says something.

Compared to anime where any stupid idea can become a hit and get a sequel, it makes me think anime has the advantage in this regard.

Might be the beginning of the end for Netflix then. I'm concerned though that all these different services popping up is going to destroy streaming in general. Part of the appeal of the service want no ads, watch when you want, as long as you want, on one platform. If people need to start signing up to 4, 5, 6, 10, 15 different services to watch what we used to watch on one or two... I think that's gonna ruin it.

For now I am glad that most anime is still on Crunchyroll, in fact ever since they teamed up directly with Funimation they have even more options. I'd hate to see that break up and spread among several different services.

So, I've read about how the one piece anime got new staff/a couple new key figures for production and didn't quite buy into it because, well, Dress Rosa and Whole Cake Island have been, beyond being incredibly boring arcs, absolutely awful in the anime between abysmal pacing (they literally went a couple PAGES per episode at some points throughout WCI) and incredibly ugly, stiff animations.

Wano tho? Holy cow. Granted it's been two episodes only, but it's all so much...more fluid I guess. You can still tell they're on a budget, obvious when the series airs weekly and has been going for 800 or so episodes with another couple hundred to go, but it's all much tidier, much more expressive, in my opinion. You get a few actually subtle gestures and changes in the character's faces. The colors pop without that weird, plastic sheen the Anime had since the time skip. The music and sound design is really good, not using as many of those silly overly cartoony effects. It really feels quite different, imo. I hope they can keep this up because I actually enjoyed the kickoff for Wano this time, I actually was not that much into the arc in the manga until a certain point.

No kidding. I just watched the first episode of Wano and I couldn’t be more happy how it’s turning out. It looks so good; the colors, the characters actually look like they come straight from the manga not the abysmal stuff from before. The animation, which I don’t even value as high as other stuff, is also great. I hope they can keep this up, who is the one at the helm? And how can we keep him/her there till the end?

@Heavyarms55, I don't necessarily mind 12-13 episode seasons, but unless they know they're getting a second season, don't blatantly set up a sequel.

I also watched the Last Hope recently, and while I think it had an inferior premise & some absolutely hideous monster designs, since it was a 24-26 episode series (I believe two 12-13 episode seasons) it had the time to explore it's characters more deeply & have more "downtime" just to get to know them, so I cared about them more by series' end.

@RR529 That's kind of the thing though - many series do set up a sequel/leave off on cliffhangers because they are based on larger source material. I think the idea was to push people to support the show and buy the merchandise to make that second season happen. It's a defective system of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. "Is it wrong to pick up girls in a Dungeon" was a great example that somehow did manage this, but it's second season - now airing - took 6 years and a spin off to happen. I could go through my reviews on Crunchyroll and name you a dozen other shows easily that I have watched, liked, and gotten frustrated by their lack of conclusion and unconfirmed second season.

Oh and yes, 12-13 episodes isn't inherently bad. I've seen some shows around that length that I really really loved.

@Heavyarms55, yeah, I guess I was just spoiled growing up on Toonami & Adult Swim where they handpicked the popular series to air, so they were likely to be the success stories that were either complete, or at the very least had a number of seasons under their belt.

So in that sense, the reality that most shows are 12-13 episodes long and don't get a sequel is just a bit hard to come to grips with.